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Welcome back to this weeks Top 40 Countdown! If you missed the first 10 songs, you can go back and check them out. At the time of this countdown, I was about to enter my teen years. My 13th birthday was less than a week away. I would get my very own little black & white TV. It didn’t matter that I did not have cable on it. It was my very own TV, and I loved it.

What were you doing at this time in 1983? Now let’s Return to the week ending August 27, 1983, and continue the countdown.

[If you’d like to see the YouTube video of the song, you can click on the song title. If you’d like to purchase or listen to the song on Amazon, you can click on the album cover]

Oh, hell yeah! Great way to start today’s countdown! If I thought there were a such thing as a guilty pleasure, this would be one of mine. This is also one of many cases where a song from a movie was better than the movie itself. See, even in the ’80s we had crappy remakes and sequels. It’s not a new thing. The difference is that today’s movies don’t have awesome music like this!

I love Laura Branigan. She has a beautiful voice, and she was beautiful, period. I was so sad when she died in 2004. But, every time I hear this song, all that comes to mind is somebody coming to our school, before prom season, to explain the dangers of drunk driving. The speaker was talking about how his brother died in a drunk driving accident, and this song played for us. It was so sad, it made me want to drink.

A lot of Air Supply songs sound the same to me. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, there are some exceptions and this is one of them. And there is a good reason for this. It was written by Jim Steinman. Steinman wrote all of Meat Loaf’s biggest hits. There is another non-Meat Loaf Jim Steinman song coming up on this week’s countdown. And I love that one too. “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” is one of those ballads that I never got sick of.

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And so began my love affair of rock music. And I have not looked back since. Def Leppard was a great band from the beginning, and they just kept getting better and better. They are still incredible in concert, and even released new studio album a couple of years ago. And unlike a certain contemporary of theirs who still puts out albums, and who shall remain nameless, Def Leppard can still rock your face off!

Welcome back to this week’s Top 40 countdown. If you missed the previous songs, you can go back and check out songs 40-31. One thing I love about the countdowns in the early ’80s is the wide variety of music. There was still variety later on in the decade too, but nothing like this. Today, we have some rock, country, pop, R&B, and even an instrumental thrown in here. So, let’s Return to the week ending October 17, 1981, and move on with the countdown…

At this point, I had still not heard of The Moody Blues. My introduction to them would not come until 1986 with “Your Wildest Dreams“. This song started off promising. But when Styx didn’t chime in with Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, I was disappointed. This isn’t a bad song. I can see how it got by me, though. I appreciate it more now then I would have back then.

Marty Balin was a founding member of Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship. He left the band in 1978. Since the only songs I know by that band from that era are the ones Grace Slick sung, I was not familiar with Marty Balin. This is another middle-of-the-road song for me. Not horrible, but not that good. But, now we will be leaving my uncharted territory, and start getting to more familiar songs.

I know a lot of people love Sting’s solo career. But, I really love these days when he was teamed up with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland. This is a classic Police tune from their album Ghost in the Machine.

This was The Commodores’ last hit single with Lionel Richie in the band. This is another favorite of mine. It is just as good, if not better, than some of Richie’s other ballads. This song was also featured in the 1982 movie The Last American Virgin.

This country-crossover hit was written by written by Hank DeVito, the pedal steel guitarist in Emmylou Harris’ backing group The Hot Band. Juice Newton made this a smash hit, reaching up to #2 for two weeks, being kept out of the top spot by “Endless Love” by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie.Juice Newton earned a 1982 Grammy nomination for Best Female Vocalist in the C&W category.

This is another smash hit which peaked at #2 on the charts. This power ballad from Foreigner’s classic 4 album, was in the number 2 position in the week of November 28, where it was held off the number 1 spot by Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” for nine consecutive weeks, and then by Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)” for a tenth week on January 30, 1982.

Time to get funky! This classic R&B hit earned Carl Carlton a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male. If you are friends with a Bruno Mars fan, point them to this song to see what it’s all about.

To prevent confusion, this song was originally released as “Here I Am (Just When I Thought I Was Over You)” so as not to be confused with the group’s No. 1 hit song “The One That You Love” which contains the lyrics: “Here I am, the one that you love.” It didn’t work with me because I still got confused.
When I was in junior high school, I was in a Catholic school. When we had dances, we had them in one of the classrooms, and moved the desks off to the sides of the room. One of the mothers would “dj” by playing tapes and albums on a stereo that somebody brought in. Whenever they wanted to play a slow song, it was always an Air Supply song. So these Air Supply songs bring me back to that time.

In addition to this smash hit that earned Mike Post a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition, you may know this legendary music producer’s other work in television shows such as Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, The A-Team, NYPD Blue, Renegade, The Rockford Files, L.A. Law, Quantum Leap, and Magnum, P.I.

As we drive off in tears at the end of the countdown for the day, let’s listen to the awesome, but sad, ballad by Quincy Jones and James Ingram. This song was featured in The Last American Virgin as Diane Franklin broke Gary’s and our hearts.

That wraps up today’s list of songs. I hope you are enjoying this. Let me know what you think so far. We are already halfway done. Come back tomorrow to see what other awesome songs were topping the charts this week in 1981.

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Welcome back as we conclude this week’s countdown. If you missed the previous songs, you can go back and check out 40-31, 30-21, and 20-11. This has been an interesting week. There have been some great songs, and some I could have gone without listening to again. But, today is going to be the best of the bunch. So, let’s return to the week ending May 24, 1980, and check out the top 10 songs of the week.

What a way to start! In my opinion, this is one of the signature songs of the ’80s. The synthesizers and guitarmake the song instantly recognizable. Even though this song was technically released in 1979, this is a totally ’80s classic.

Christopher Cross began the decade and his career with his incredible self-titled debut album. This is one of the songs that helped make it so successful. This is one of my favorite songs by him. It doesn’t hurt that Michael McDonald is on here with the backing vocals. This is probably Christopher Cross’ most rockin’ song.

This is a really good song by Linda Ronstadt. I know the Eagles were her band early on in the ’70s. They were no longer with her at this point, and were actually on the verge of a breakup themselves around this time, but this song sounds a lot like the Eagles. This was a cover of a 1965 Top 10 hit by Little Anthony & The Imperials.

Here is a great guilty pleasure. If I post this song on Facebook, it gets a ton of hits, likes and comments. Ambrosia was a very good soft rock band of the late ’70s/early ’80s. They have nice music to chill too.

Now, let’s see what was topping some of the other charts this week. The rock chart was not in existence yet. And with all the soft rock and ballads on this countdown, there may not have been enough rock songs to have a top 40 list.

This is my pick of the day. I love this duet. Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes sound so good together. This song was written by David Ellingson and Kim Carnes. They presented it to Kenny Rogers and he was going to do it as a duet with somebody else. But, Kenny said, “why don’t you and I do it?” It would become a #3 smash hit, and a #1 hit on the Country charts.

As we approach the #1 song, we have yet another classic ’80s song. There are some songs that really helped define the musical landscape of the decade, and this is one of them. On paper, you would think I would be sick of this song. But, I still love it so much! And I like the Pseudo Echo cover version of this song even more. That song has more of a rock edge than a disco sound, and still has that classic ’80s sound.

We have arrived at our #1 song. And we have another classic! This song was a #1 hit for 6 straight weeks. I don’t think I listened to the radio too much back then, but I do remember this getting played a lot. I love the guitar work in this song. And how can you not love Debbie Harry?!? I think this is a great way to end the countdown. In a ballad heavy countdown, we end with a rocker.

Well that wraps up this week’s countdown. I hope you enjoyed it. Man, oh man, The Force Awakens next week! To celebrate, we are going to countdown the biggest songs of the week that the original Star Wars opened. Yes, we are going to be rebels,and return to the week ending May 28, 1977. I am debating making it a ’70s week next week on Return to the ’80s.
So, let me know what you think of this week’s countdown, and let me know if you would like a ’70s theme for Remember That Song and the Quote of the Day. Until then, Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.